- France: More than 1,700 people banned from leaving British cruise ship over likely stomach flu outbreak
Source: Sky News [UK]
“More than 1,700 passengers and crew members have been ordered not to leave their cruise ship while French health officials carry out tests after a likely stomach flu outbreak onboard. The cruise liner Ambition, which set sail from Belfast on 8 May, on a 14-night tour of western France and Spain, has seen dozens of cases of suspected gastroenteritis among those onboard. The vessel called at Liverpool on Saturday and cases of gastroenteritis were said to have risen after passengers boarded at that stop. There is no reason to link what looks like a stomach flu outbreak on the ship with the hantavirus cluster on the luxury MV Hondius ship, the regional health authority said.” (05/13/26)
- Russia: City regime issues censorship order on photos/videos of drone strike effects
Source: US News & World Report
“Moscow authorities have imposed restrictions on the publication of photos and videos showing the aftermath of ‘terrorist attacks,’ including drone strikes, the office of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Wednesday. An order appearing on the mayor’s official website, referring to the city’s ‘Anti-terrorist Commission’ said the directive was aimed at ‘preventing the dissemination of unreliable information.’ It prevents media, as well as individuals and emergency services, from publishing any pictures or videos of ‘terrorist acts, including drone attacks’ until they appear on websites of the Defence Ministry or city government. … Other parts of Russia have already imposed similar bans.” (05/13/26)
- Board of Peace envoy Mladenov says ceasefire hinges on Hamas’s disarmament
Source: SFGate
“Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat overseeing the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, said Wednesday the truce hinged on Hamas’ disarmament, a sticking point that has stalled progress on other fronts, including rebuilding the mostly destroyed enclave. The high representative for U.S. President Donald Trump’s International Board of Peace in Gaza, Mladenov, said months without progress implementing the deal benefited neither Israel nor Palestinians. He said the phased deal was paralyzed over Hamas not yet disarming, calling it ‘not negotiable.'” (05/13/26)
- Shrinking Milka chocolate bar tricked consumers, says German court
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“In a landmark German case targeting chocolate ‘shrinkflation’, a court has found that the manufacturer of Milka’s classic Alpine Milk bar cheated consumers and broke competition law. Cutting back on the amount of chocolate while having the same kind of wrapper meant that customers were being misled, Bremen regional court ruled. The three-week court case was brought by Hamburg’s consumer protection office (VZHH), which accused manufacturer Mondelēz of deceiving consumers by cutting the weight of the ‘Alpenmilch’ bar from 100g to 90g. Reacting to the ruling Mondelēz told the BBC it was ‘taking the decision of the court seriously’ and would ‘look at it in detail now’. ” (05/13/26)
- TX: Home invasion ends in fatal shooting
Source: Yahoo! News
“A home invasion in Hopkins County ended in gunfire Tuesday when a homeowner fatally shot an alleged intruder, local authorities said. … investigators reviewed footage from a Ring doorbell camera that showed an individual, identified as Buck Clary, striking the glass front door of the residence while yelling. The footage reportedly showed Clary breaking a ‘portion of the glass and reaching inside the home,’ the sheriff’s office said. The homeowner then discharged a firearm through the door, striking Clary.” (05/13/26)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/home-invasion-ends-fatal-shooting-160205157.html
- To Save Rural Health Care, Bring It out of the Dark Ages
Source: Independent Institute
by John C Goodman“Last year, Republicans in Congress cut Medicaid outlays and refused to extend Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies. Yet less federal spending on health care threatened to affect a key Republican constituency: rural voters. To avoid retaliation for their actions, Republicans included $50 billion for rural health care in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to be spent in various ways. Here is the bad news. Even before last year’s legislative actions, rural areas in the U.S. were losing doctors, hospitals and even pharmacies. That trend is likely to continue, and neither party has a realistic plan to deal with it.” (05/13/26)
- The Decline and Fall of Human Agency
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jeffrey Bilbro“Whenever a new technology comes down the pike, some people identify themselves as agents who can benefit from it, and others see themselves as victims who will be harmed by it. Agents get excited about how AI will enable them to get work done more easily and quickly. They can generate code, whip out targeted ad campaigns, analyze data, cheat on quizzes, respond to customer inquiries, or eliminate military targets. Victims fear that AI will empower the systems that already constrain or oppress them. They will suffer from software bugs or security vulnerabilities, be inundated with AI slop, get surveilled by governments and corporations, have their relationships infected by mistrust, get lost in labyrinthine bureaucracies, or be eliminated (perhaps erroneously) by an autonomous drone. This distinction helps make sense of the wildly varying responses to AI technologies: Agents generate utopian hype narratives while victims succumb to doomer fears.” (05/13/26)
https://lawliberty.org/forum/the-decline-and-fall-of-human-agency/
- Federal Courts, Local Wrongs: How Qualified Immunity Gave Us Lawless Law Enforcement
Source: Liberalism.org
by Radley Balko“At the state and local level, police officers (and government employees in general) are protected from lawsuits by a policy called qualified immunity. The policy isn’t in the Constitution, nor was it ever enacted by Congress. It’s a legal fiction that the U.S. Supreme Court invented from whole cloth. In fact, qualified immunity’s very existence cuts against the clear intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. … We commonly hear that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’ — you can’t defend yourself from criminal charges by claiming that you didn’t know that what you did was illegal. Qualified immunity not only provides an excuse for law enforcement officers when they violate someone’s constitutional rights, it’s an incentive for police agencies to keep their officers ignorant of how courts expect officers to treat members of the public.” (04/13/26)
- No good reason to reject liberty
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“People find many reasons to reject liberty. Fear. Envy. Ignorance. Tradition. In fact, there are probably as many reasons to reject liberty as there are people on this planet. Those whose careers depend on violating liberty will use any excuse they are handed. If they use envy, they can impose socialism and raise taxes on the rich. They can make people believe they have a ‘right’ to things that others must work to provide them. It can never be your right to enslave others! Using ignorance, political criminals lie and hope that too few notice to do anything about it. It’s how we get things like ‘assault weapon’ rules, carbon credits, and the war on (some) drugs. They also combine ignorance with envy, so those cheated in the brain department will demand to be coddled to dumb down society so that no one feels stupid.” (05/13/26)
- The Trump Hustle: Distraction, Deception and the Heist of the American Economy
Source: CounterPunch
by John Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead“Call it what it is: a heist. The corruption, cronyism, and self-dealing that now define the American government—under Donald Trump in particular—amount to a slow-motion stick-up carried out in broad daylight. But here’s the trick: it’s a heist hidden behind spectacle. The Trump administration is flooding the stage with noise so ‘we the people’ don’t notice what’s happening behind the curtain. We’re being manipulated into watching the wrong thing. The distractions are part of the plan to rob us blind. You don’t have to look far to see how the con works. Nowhere is the hustle more obvious than in how the presidency itself is being used.” (05/13/26)
- Foreign Policy Payback: Russia Backs Iran Against United States
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Ted Galen Carpenter“The previous proxy wars over the decades have had one important feature in common. The two great power rivals have successfully exploited ill-advised military ventures that the other country pursued. Taking advantage of such folly enabled the opponent to score relatively rewarding victories with minimal risk and effort. The Soviet Union took advantage of the foolish decision by multiple U.S. administrations to intervene in Vietnam’s civil war. … In the late 1970s, the Kremlin helped topple Afghanistan’s royalist government and install a communist successor. That ill-advised power play gave Washington an opportunity to achieve revenge for Moscow’s geopolitical success in Southeast Asia. … It’s still too early to be certain about the ultimate results of the ongoing proxy wars in Ukraine and Iran. There are opportunities for geopolitical triumphs on either side, but the potential for spectacular failures also exists.” (05/13/26)
- Trump May Wish to Reconsider Supporting Term Limits
Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring“Attempts to restructure government at the federal level are mostly on the Democrat agenda. Pack the US Supreme Court. Elect presidents via popular vote. Turn Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, into states with two senators each. Implement national mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, legalize ballot harvesting, lower the voting age to 16, let felons vote, let noncitizens vote. And, of course, end the Senate filibuster. If they could, Democrats would do all of this. Meanwhile, however, there is a growing bipartisan movement to implement term limits for members of the House and Senate. A bill has been introduced in the 119th Congress, and President Trump has supported term limits consistently since he first ran for president in 2016. But federal term limits would do more harm than good.” (05/13/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/13/trump-may-wish-to-reconsider-supporting-term-limits/
- The Science is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Rindala Alajaji“As statehouses ramp up for 2026, we’re seeing a familiar and concerning trend of lawmakers rushing to regulate the internet based on shockingly shaky science. From the California State Assembly to the Massachusetts and Minnesota legislatures, a wave of bills is crashing against the digital lives of young people, with proponents of these measures framing social media access as a ‘public health epidemic,’ or a ‘mental health crisis,’ even though we have yet to see any of the settled science that those labels usually invoke. As a digital rights organization dedicated to the civil liberties of all users, EFF’s expertise lies in reminding lawmakers that young people enjoy largely the same free speech and privacy rights as adults.” (05/14/26)
- Hantavirus, the WHO, and the Conflicts in Weighing Mortality
Source: Brownstone Institute
by David Bell“Yesterday, almost 2,000 people, mostly young children, died of malaria because they could not access effective and relatively cheap treatment quickly enough. About 4,000 people died of tuberculosis (TB), including many young adults leaving orphans. This happens every day. Progress in reducing these numbers is stalling, as partly due to the continuing economic damage from the Covid-19 response. … The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus cases occur every year, spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The current media coverage and WHO news conferences therefore concern about one-thousandth of the cases expected this year. The United States averages about 30 – they simply have not been newsworthy. … So, among the 170,000 average deaths in the world each day, and thousands from the WHO’s traditional focus diseases, why the excitement over Hantavirus?” (05/13/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/hantavirus-the-who-and-the-conflicts-in-weighing-mortality/
- Africa refashions relations with the West
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“This week’s Africa Forward summit in Nairobi, Kenya, signals both continuity and change – or, to put it differently, continuing change in perceptions of the continent’s opportunities and abilities to decisively shape its future. Co-hosted by Kenya and France, the May 11-12 event has drawn some 30 heads of state and 7,000 government and business representatives to the East African capital city. Discussions are focused on investment (in artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and infrastructure) and on ways to reform international trade and finance systems to address indebtedness and unlock capital flows.” (05/12/26)
- Ben Sasse’s Warning: Reclaim Your Attention Before It’s Too Late
Source: Mindset Shifts
by Barry Brownstein“The ability to direct one’s attention is an increasingly scarce and valuable practice — and a prerequisite for meaningful freedom.” (05/13/26)
https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/p/ben-sasses-warning-reclaim-your-attention
- America needs drone defense plan before disaster strikes
Source: Fox News Forum
by Jason Chaffetz“In the USA there are roughly 220,000 commercial aircraft. By 2027, the FAA estimates there will be more than 2.7 million drones. As firefighting aircraft raced to drop retardant on a raging wildfire in Utah’s Provo Canyon last summer, some flights were grounded by a new threat. Private drones, presumably trying to capture dramatic footage of the fire, forced critical support to stand down while flames advanced. This incident was no anomaly. There were hundreds of drone sightings over wildfires in 2025. Such civilian disruptions are only the beginning. Drone warfare and prevalence has come to American soil. Cheap, loosely regulated drones have the capability to disrupt military bases, surveil the homes of Cabinet secretaries and your backyard, threaten aircraft, and even attack the president of the United States. These threats are not hypothetical. It is real, it is now, and it urgently must be addressed.” (05/13/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jason-chaffetz-america-needs-drone-defense-plan-disaster-strikes
- America can’t afford year-round E15 fuel — Congress must reject it
Source: The Hill
by David Widawsky“As Congress debates proposals to allow the year-round sale of E15 gasoline — fuel blended with 15 percent corn ethanol rather than the common 10 percent blend — lawmakers are being told this is a simple win for consumers, farmers and energy security. Unfortunately, evidence shows that is not the case. In reality, ‘year-round E15’ legislation would deepen an environmentally damaging and economically inefficient policy while increasing costs for American families already struggling with inflation. And let’s be real, the proposal is not about energy independence. It is a back-door way to expand the domestic market for U.S. corn at consumers’ expense, after U.S. corn farmers and exports were shocked by the cancellation of more than 1 million tons of U.S. food aid (mostly corn) to countries with poor and undernourished children.” [editor’s note: Allow? Absolutely. Subsidize? Absolutely not. End all ethanol subsidies and let the idea succeed or fail on its own – TLK] (05/13/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5873925-year-round-e15-gasoline-debate/
- Either You Believe Israel Is Evil Or You Believe It’s All An Elaborate Conspiracy
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“Basically you have two choices: either you believe Israel is a genocidal state that is morally comparable to Nazi Germany, or you believe there’s a giant global conspiracy of mainstream western institutions and media outlets dedicated to making Israel look bad. Believing the second option is the only way to get around believing the first. That’s the only way to believe mainstream outlets like The New York Times are committing antisemitic blood libel with their reporting on the systemic sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. It’s the only way to dismiss the fact that every relevant human rights group on earth says Israel is guilty of genocide, while zero comparable human rights groups say it isn’t. You necessarily need to espouse a wild conspiracy theory. You need to believe the conspiracy goes all the way to the top, with its tentacles in mainstream institutions all across the globe.” (05/13/26)
- In Cuba, Socialism Has Morphed Into A Racket
Source: Persuasion
by James Bloodworth“For decades, Cuba has presented itself—both to its citizens and to the world—as a socialist alternative to the inequalities of global capitalism. That story still has its defenders abroad. But spend any time on the island today and it becomes clear that something else has taken its place: not socialism in any meaningful sense, but a post-ideological system run by a military-commercial elite that continues to speak the language of revolution long after the revolution itself has faded. Socialism has already fallen in Havana, even if some of the country’s intransigent foreign admirers remain staunchly ignorant of the fact. That the implacable state continues to wave a red flag is neither here nor there.” (05/13/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/socialism-has-already-fallen-in-cuba
- Progressives and Conservatives Are Wrong About Taxing the Rich
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe“[B]oth progressives and conservatives show a complete unwillingness or inability to distinguish between those who got rich by genuinely creating value that left society as a whole better off and those who are getting rich by expropriating wealth through force. Establishment conservatives will often agree that some businessmen and companies engage in rent-seeking or work with government regulators to protect themselves from competition. But they’ll usually write that behavior off as an isolated issue that in no way defines the economic status quo in the US. But it’s a major factor. The government has been intervening heavily in the economy on behalf of well-connected companies for at least the last century.” (05/13/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/progressives-and-conservatives-are-wrong-about-taxing-rich
- The Political Orphanage, 05/13/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“Fighting Crime Like an Economist.” (05/13/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/fighting-crime-like-an-economist
- Reasonably Optimistic, 05/13/26
Source: Washington Post
“What prediction markets tell us about the future.” (05/13/26)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/impromptu/what-prediction-markets-tell-us-about-the-future/
- Rising, 05/13/26
Source: The Hill
“Glenn Greenwald slams AOC as ‘unprincipled, craven, partisan apparatchik.'” (05/13/26)
- Half the Answer, episode 83
Source: Liberal Currents
“In a time when the ruling party seems to be totally fine with breaking every law, every rule, and every norm that was holding our country in the general shape and consistency of a democracy, what should the opposition party be willing to do? Are there times when retaliation that goes against one of our principles might serve a greater purpose? Are there times when it would only further erode our values? Trent and Caitlin ask Political Theory Professor Jacob T. Levy what he thinks.” (05/14/26)
- AI Summer, 05/13/26
Source: AI Summer
“Divyansh Kaushik on the robotics race between China and the US.” (05/13/26)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 05/13/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Tucker Carlson A ‘Domestic Terrorist?'” (05/16/26)
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 05/13/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump’s Rage Boils Over at Journos as Inflation Data Takes Brutal Turn.” (05/13/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/210345/trump-rage-boils-journos-inflation-data-takes-brutal-turn
- Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 05/13/26
Source: Freedom Works
“Jake Werner, Quincy Institute ‘Trump-Xi Summit.'” (05/13/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-05-14_zfw005132026.mp3